


Punnett Squares

by Zoeleo



Series: Rara Avis [13]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Adoption, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Or Bruce adopts Jason but doesn't make him Robin, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-30 08:31:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15093050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoeleo/pseuds/Zoeleo
Summary: There's something wrong with Jason. Bruce has never seen him treat a book so roughly - shoving the biology textbook onto the floor, pages wrinkled, spine up. Blood and genetics aren't what makes family. Reading books about a seagull having an existential crisis together are what makes family.





	Punnett Squares

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, okay. I think I got the science fixed y'all. God, not going to lie that was embarrassing and heartbreaking. Thank you to everyone who chimed in to help me fix things. Talk about an exercise in frustration. Tried to do this first with eye color, except got the blue/brown switched and that would absolutely not have been possible without changing Jason's eye color to brown which would contradict his established appearance in this verse... So I started looking for other genetic traits. But ends up basically all physically observational human traits are NOT simple Mendelian inheritance. And everything we were taught in middle school biology was lies. Hairy knuckles? Tongue rolling? Dimples? Cleft Chins? Hitchhiker thumbs? ALL LIES. Cowlick direction and wet/dry ear wax are really the only ones that work and like Jason's going to have made a scientific study of his parents earwax???? So. Hours of exhausting research later... And then I had to fricking derive a way Jason would possibly know all three of their blood types DX I humbly submit, Take 2 of this tragedy. 
> 
> For canon nerds: Wolf Krieger is Captain Nazi's brother. This is basically... My rewrite of Jason discovering _the box_ for this Verse. I always hated that reveal in canon, it was just so horribly and obviously contrived. So I decided to play with another way where Jason could be faced with the same realization without a creepy old lady luring him in to look at a box of her neighbors things she inexplicably saved for years. _Jonathan Livingston Seagull_ is ridiculous. I mean, it's well written and worth reading (very short easy read), but every once in a while I think about a seagull having an existential crisis and I can't stop laughing.

Bruce comes home with a spring in his step. Selina had returned from her latest jaunt to Rome or Paris or wherever. As long as they take place out of Gotham, he tries not to pay too close attention to her escapades. Plausible deniability. And if she may have palmed one or two small pieces out of the private collection of Wolf Krieger that inexplicably ended up on the steps of the Berggruen in Berlin three days ago… Well, Bruce isn’t sure he could be too angry in lieu of the return of over a hundred Nazi-looted artworks. That is, _if_ she was responsible. 

All he knew for certain was that when he got out of the shareholder’s review that morning; she’d been perched on his office desk in a fetching black silk romper and a new coiffure. She’d whisked him off for lunch at her favorite bistro with sidewalk seating, public enough to set tongues wagging and pop off a new scandal for the paparazzi to print, then parted with a smile and the whispered promise that patrol tonight would be _fun_. He’s in such a good mood he risks dipping a finger in the sauce Alfred is stirring on the stove top. He aims a megawatt Brucie smile in the butler’s direction in a completely unrepentant apology.

“Tastes great Alfred, what’s—what’s wrong?”

The grin slips off his face. Something is definitely wrong if Alfred isn’t scolding him. 

“I believe Master Jason had a difficult day at school,” the butler informs him, brows furrowed in concern.

Bruce groans internally. They had been doing so well lately. Between Riley’s presence and Jason’s fledgling circle of friends, Jason had been settling in at Gotham Academy more smoothly than the first time. He had hoped the bloody noses and suspensions for schoolyard fistfights were a thing of the past. 

“Is he okay?” Bruce asks, shoving his disappointment aside.

“I don’t believe he was involved in any kind of an altercation, if that’s what you mean.” Alfred’s lips purse, “The school or Mister Jamison would have alerted me otherwise. Mister Jamison said that Master Jason has been acting oddly since before lunch. I attempted to engage with him to find out what was the matter, but he would not share what was bothering him. I think it may be one of those matters best left to his father.”

Bruce sighs, “Coming in loud and clear, Penny-One.”

He drops his briefcase in his office and stops by his bedroom to change out of his suit before hunting Jason down. Predictably, he finds him in the library, curled up in one of the window benches. There’s a book in his lap but Jason isn’t looking at it, his gaze is directed out the window watching the shadows of the trees stretch across the lawn as the sun starts to set. He jumps when Bruce sits down at the other end of the bench. 

“Shit, Bruce. Make some noise when you come in would ya? ‘s creepy when you just appear out of thin air like that,” he grumbles.

Bruce frowns. He had not been attempting stealth at all. More than that though, Jason rarely calls him that anymore. He’s ‘Dad’ now; ‘Old Man’ if Jason is in a particularly puckish mood. Hearing his first name from his youngest’s lips feels awkward and unnatural. 

“Sorry, Jay-lad,” he drops the pet name, trying to eke out a fondly aggrieved eye-roll at least, but Jason’s eyes just lock onto his knees where he picks at a growing hole in his jeans. “How was school?” 

Jason shrugs. Undeterred, Bruce looks at the book in Jason’s lap. He’s surprised to find it’s a science textbook and not the usual fantasy novel. There’s illustrations of what look like Punnett Squares on one page.

“So, what are you reading?” he tries again.

That finally provokes a reaction. Jason’s lip curls in a sneer and he pushes the book off his lap viciously. It lands spine up on the library floor. 

“Just some stupid— _thing_ we learned in biology today,” Jason spits.

Bruce can hear the tightness in his throat and see the watery shine building up along the bottom of his eyelids. He moves forward instinctively and lays a hand on Jason’s knee. Touch: yes or no? Jason latches onto it and Bruce pulls him into his lap. 

“What did you learn?” he asks, breath ruffling Jason’s curls.

“Did you know that if someone with type O blood—has a kid with someone with type B, they can’t have a kid who's got type—A—AB blood?”

Bruce nods. Yes, this is fairly basic genetics. 

“ ‘Cept, Willis an Mom, Willis was type B, and Mom was—was type O. But I’m AB—”

Bruce wraps his arms around the shaking body and tucks Jason’s head under his chin. He waits for Jason to calm down enough to continue.

“Oh Jason.”

He rocks them gently back and forth, at a loss for words. Guilt settles over him before the shock fades off, heavy and uncomfortable as a lead radiation apron. He has files on both Willis and Catherine Todd, had compiled them as soon as he took Jason in. He’d also spent hours with Leslie, going over test results, and lab reports filling in forms when Jason first moved in and they were afraid the boy may be suffering from an autoimmune disease. 

How had he not noticed? He’s Batman. For all of the martial arts training and tech that he’s picked up to help along the way, at it’s core Batman was meant to be a detective. Some detective he turned out to be. What good is all of that heightened observation and deductive reasoning if he didn’t even realize this about his son? If he had known he could have—could have put a contingency in place, had a talk planned for this scenario. But he didn’t and now he’s sitting here less than useless while his son’s heart breaks.

“You… You know your parent’s blood types?” he can’t help but ask curiously. 

Bruce hadn’t even known his own until he was sixteen and didn’t dodge quickly enough in his first week training with David Cain. 

“Had to—my mom—Cathy, had to fill out her forms ‘n stuff when she was sick. She had a hard time hold—holding the pen. And Willis, he—this one time he took me out to—to help him jack tires and he—these guys got pissed and roughed him up and one of ‘em stabbed him—and I remember the nurse kept screaming it.”

Briefly, wretchedly he wishes his father was still here. Thomas Wayne had been everything a good father should be. Understanding, kind, alternately gentle and strong when necessary. Bruce wishes he could call him and say, _my son is hurting, Dad – what do I do?_ He wishes he had had more time with him to learn from his example. Maybe then he would have done better by Dick too. 

“I just—I wish I could have been hers. Why’d it have to be him?” Jason sobs.

Bruce closes his eyes and tries not to squeeze too tightly. Of course that wouldn’t escape Jason’s attention. His son is smart. Bruce has mug shots of Willis Todd uploaded to the computer in the Cave. There was no mistaking the lineage. If Jason keeps growing at the rate he is, he’ll be the spitting image of his father in a few years.

“D’ya think—d’ya think that’s why I wasn’t—wasn’t enough?” 

“Enough for what?” Bruce asks in confusion.

“If I’d been her real kid maybe she’d a loved me enough to quit?”

“No!” he answers sharply. 

He turns Jason around in his lap so that they are facing each other. He takes Jason’s tear and snot streaked cheeks in his hands. 

“No, Jason. Your mother, Catherine, loved you very very much. Addiction is…” he struggles to find the words, “Addiction is a disease. It changes the chemistry of the brain and affects people’s ability to control their compulsions. If you had been her own flesh and blood, you wouldn’t have been able to save her anymore than if she’d had cancer. She lived as long as she did, _because_ she loved you. She lived as long as she could until her body gave out. It had nothing to do with you, it wasn’t your fault. Don’t ever think it was your fault, please.”

He holds his gaze and brushes him thumb under Jason’s right eye, sliding through the moisture beaded on the delicate skin there. Jason nods weakly. Bruce crushes him against his chest once more. He kisses the crown of his head and more words tumble from his mouth, hesitant whispers that leave him cracked open and vulnerable despite his role of comforter and protector. 

“You’re not my biological son either but… Jason, I could not love you anymore even if you were. _The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life._ And you bring me so so much joy.”

They sit there until the shadows eat up the last of the gold-tipped grass and Jason’s heaving gasps have slowed into deep placid lungfuls. He wipes ineffectually at his cheeks, smearing the snot onto the cuffs of his sleeves. He leans heavily against Bruce, letting the man support his exhausted frame. It makes Bruce smile, the trust he’s displaying. He wouldn’t have let himself be this close, this exposed to Bruce a year ago.

“Who’s that from?” Jason croaks, “Sounded good. So I know you didn’t make it up.”

Bruce pulls back to glower at his son, “Hey.”

“Don’t even. You write gala speeches not poetry, and even then half the time it’s Gloria in PR who writes your stuff for you,” Jason persists, voice still scratchy.

Bruce’s mouth quirks.

“Fine. It’s a quote by an American author and aviator, Richard Bach.”

“Oh. I don’t know who that is. Did he write anything I would know?”

Bruce hums, “Probably not. He’s most famous for a book called Jonathan Livingston Seagull.” 

“What’s it about?” Jason asks, wriggling around to settle more comfortably in Bruce’s arms. 

“Well uh… It’s about a seagull.”

“For real?”

“Yes,” Bruce laughs, “For real. It’s about a seagull named Jonathan Livingston Seagull who loves flying. More than most seagulls. And he grows tired with ordinary mundane seagull life and starts a journey to fly longer and higher and faster than any seagull ever before and… along the way he learns about things like love and forgiveness and freedom.”

There’s a long pause. 

“Dad, was that guy on drugs when he wrote it?”

Bruce tosses his head back and laughs, deep rolling bouts of laughter that shake them both. Jason’s snickers tickle his chest pleasantly.

“Probably, Jay. Probably.”


End file.
